Well, well, well. It looks like Fox News’ favorite Arizona “borderexpert,” Sheriff Paul Babeu has some ‘splaining to do. If reporting in the Phoenix New Times is correct, it turns out this anti-immigration sheriff-turned-Congressional-candidate had an affair with a Mexican man Babeu has threatened to deport. Oh, and there was some texting/emailing of the sort that led Fox Newsies to clamorforAnthonyWeiner’s downfall. UPDATED.

We’ve long known there was something dishonest about Babeu. Although he likes to play a border expert on TV, in real life, his district, Pinal County, is 70 miles away. But a lengthy, salacious and detailed article in New Times reports of dishonesty on a whole new level as it relates a narrative of Babeu’s affair with a Mexican national that turned sour after Babeu was caught cheating. If Babeu’s ex-lover’s accusations are true, Babeu threatened him with deportation after he was caught posting hostile comments about Babeu on the internet.

I could care less about whether or not Babeu is gay or with whom he has sex. But threatening an ex-lover with deportation suggests some real wrongdoing. As an immigration attorney in the New Times article noted, it means either Babeu is an astounding hypocrite for having an affair with someone he knew was here illegally (identified merely as "Jose" in the article) or he wrongfully used the power of his office to threaten someone against whom he has a personal grudge.

Informed of the situation, Nancy-Jo Merritt, a longtime Phoenix immigration attorney, says such a threat would be indicative of an “atmosphere that’s been created politically in this state, so that if you get angry at someone who is Hispanic, you immediately jump down to the level of threatening to deport him.

“If what [Babeu’s attorney] says is correct [about Jose’s being illegal], either the sheriff had a long relationship with someone he knew was undocumented, while all the time being Mr. Bluster about the border and using it for political gain,” or he threatened to deport someone he just broke up with, Merritt says.

Then there’s the Weiner aspect. The article also reports allegations that Babeu emailed revealing photos of himself to the Mexican ex, posing as an anonymous, potential lover on the internet.

During the previous year, Jose says, Babeu e-mailed explicit photographs of himself to an anonymous man he met on the gay adam4adam.com website.

Jose knows this because he posed as this man after his suspicions resurfaced that Babeu was cheating on him.

He shared with New Times photographs that he claims Babeu e-mailed to the anonymous love interest. In the photographs, the sheriff revealed himself shirtless, in his underwear, and naked from the waist down.

So will Fox News condemn Babeu’s behavior with even half the enthusiasm with which it condemned Weiner? The story broke in New Times on Thursday (2/16/12) and has now been picked up by Arizona’s The Republic. But on FoxNews.com, so far the silence is deafening.

UPDATE: FoxNews.com has a story on this. Developing...

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Sheriff Babeu has been a source of amusement for a couple of years: the fearless border defender whose county doesn’t come with 70 miles of Mexico; the great defender of the Arizona lifestyle from Massachusetts. I’m confident that he will provide amusement for years to come. Too bad that Fox won’t be able to report on the great stories.

This just keeps getting better and better… by which I mean a bigger mess by the minute. Maybe Fox News ignoring this will be a good thing, because there’s only one thing this story needs less than them joining in… and I won’t say that something out loud.

Babeu outed himself, admitted the relationship is real, both of which got a kinda “well duh!” reaction. The reporters seemed to be “we always kinda suspected,” and his people didn’t seem to care.

What IS being cared about is that he then danced around the bigger questions- like confirming “Jose’s” citizenship status at the time of the relationship, and some of the other puzzling claims he made about the post-breakup.

If this were a prominent Democratic figure, Fox Nation, at least, would be all over it. But now that Sheriff Arpaio is in hot legal water and Babeau is in possible wiener trouble, who will the Fox News go to guy for immigrant bashing?